Register here for the North American meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and hear Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commissioner Cathy Foerster’s (NGP Photo-Above) Keynote address next Monday morning in Anchorage: "The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s Response to Macondo." -dh
- Heavy oil starts (Full story) Following a lengthy delay after the completion of a $100 million heavy oil test facility on Alaska’s North Slope, BP has now put a heavy oil test well into operation …..
- Exxon’s Thomson warning (Full story) ExxonMobil is suggesting its Point Thomson project on Alaska’s eastern North Slope might not make its projected start-up date due to further delays in securing a federal wetlands permit. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is the lead agency reviewing ExxonMobil’s project, is now running a year….
- Korea eyes Arctic gas (Full story) Korea Gas, the world’s largest importer of LNG, is quietly scouting the Canadian Arctic amid speculation that the state-owned company has plans other than shipping natural gas by pipeline to southern North American markets. Chad Yeng, general manager of Kogas Canada, told the Globe and Mail that if….
NYT by Clifford Krauss. SAVOONGA, Alaska — Shell Oil will present an ambitious proposal to the federal government this week, seeking permission to drill up to 10 exploratory oil wells beneath Alaska’s frigid Arctic waters. … Shell has led the way, working for five 
years to convince regulators, 
environmentalists, Native Alaskans and several courts that it could manage the process safely, protect polar bears and other wildlife, safeguard air quality for residents and respond quickly to any spill in the region. But BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster a year ago put a chill on new offshore drilling. … “Americans are reeling from staggering prices at the pump,” said Representative Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “So the president has to justify to the American people why we are not replacing Saudi Arabian oil imports with U.S.-produced oil.” … “If the Obama administration approves drilling in the Arctic, it will demonstrate that they have learned nothing from the gulf spill,” said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is suing to stop Shell. Administration officials say only that they will thoroughly review Shell’s new proposal. “We need to continue to take a cautious approach in the Arctic that is guided by science and the voices of North Slope communities,” said Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which oversees most of the process. … Pete Slaiby (NGP Photo-L), Shell’s top executive in Alaska, was glad-handing last week in Savoonga, a village on an island in the Bering Sea. … Shell has already spent $3.7 billion on the 10-year offshore leases and preparations for exploration, although the company has yet to drill a single hole. Shell will formally present its new proposal — to drill up to 10 wells over the next two years in remote waters north of Alaska, in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas — in the next few days. If the plan is approved within nine months or so, exploration could begin next year. Just as in the past, executives realize they need to fight the battle on multiple regulatory and legal fronts. “It’s like holding a bunch of pins in your hand, and trying to make sure not one drops,” said Brian Malnak, Shell’s vice president of government affairs. … Shell is proposing to use two drill ships, each capable of drilling a relief well for the other in case of the kind of blowout that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig. The company is also promising to add more testing and an extra set of shears to its blowout preventers and to keep emergency capping systems near drilling sites to capture any potential leaks. Alaska once accounted for a third of the nation’s oil production, but its fields are now in steep decline. The decrease in production threatens the continued safe use of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, also known as TAPS, which requires a steady flow of oil to avert corrosion and spills. The Alaskan Arctic potentially holds 27 billion barrels of oil. “If we could open the Arctic to oil exploration,” said Alaska’s governor, Sean Parnell (NGP Photo), “we can fill that TAPS line in a way to preserve it for another 50 to 100 years.” Major production from the Arctic would probably be a decade away, however. …In his presentation in Savoonga, Mr. Slaiby said Shell and other companies had safely drilled in Alaska’s Arctic waters in the 1980s and 1990s, without a spill or major damage to wildlife. And he noted that the wells Shell intended to drill here were far shallower than BP’s ill-fated Macondo well, making the possibility of a blowout more remote.
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